SENATOR TIM AYRES, MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE: I’m really pleased to be here on behalf of the Albanese Labor Government to make this announcement today. I want to thank, firstly today, the staff and leadership of Nyrstar’s Port Pirie facility, for taking the premier and I, and minister Tom Koutsantonis, around the facility and explaining the work that they do in this vital industrial facility for South Australia and for Australia.

Today’s announcement secures the first phase of a two-year feasibility study to upgrade and build the capability of this vital industrial facility. I want to thank the South Australian government for their commitment to this project, and their substantial contribution. Peter, it’s a terrific piece of work for South Australia. I also want to thank the government of Tasmania, and all of the officials who have been engaged in this work.

The commitment here on behalf of the three governments is a $135 million plan that takes us well into the first half of 2026 as part of this plan to build the capability of this plant to modernise and compete for the future. Vital to this is the joint plans of Nyrstar and the government to build the critical minerals production capability of these facilities.

I want to thank, as well, the management and leadership of Nyrstar, their local team, led by Matt Howell; the global CEO of Trafigura, Richard Holtum, who’s here today. It’s really important to have the global leadership of this firm here, engaged and active, along with his – with his joint leader, Jiri Zrust. The package is $135 million, $57.5 million dollars from the Commonwealth government, $55 million from South Australia, and $22.5 million dollars from the government of Tasmania to secure the future of the Port Pirie facility and the Hobart facility.

What’s absolutely essential to this has been Trafigura and Nyrstar’s willingness to engage with the Commonwealth government about our ambitions as a government to secure the future of critical minerals production in Australia. And that means that as well as processing lead and zinc here as part of a future made in Australia, that this facility will be producing, for example, antimony metal. Products like this antimony are absolutely vital, particularly in global defence supply chains.

As we work through the next few months, this facility should be able to upgrade to a position where it’s producing 15,000 tonnes of antimony metal, about 40 per cent of, for example, American antimony requirements.

There are other critical minerals that we can process here in Australia as a byproduct of the lead and zinc manufacturing processes in Port Pirie and Hobart. I’m really pleased with the way that this firm has stepped up, has engaged with the priorities of the Commonwealth government and the South Australian government and Tasmania, and are making a substantial contribution themselves in committing to the future of this facility, the future of this region and, of course, in Tasmania, Hobart’s future industrial production.

It's absolutely vital, too, for the local workforce that a commitment has been given to secure local jobs as part of this process. A commitment around the security over the life of this agreement for local workers who are engaged directly by Nyrstar, but, critically, the maintenance and engineering upgrades are going to require hundreds of additional workers as contractors here in Port Pirie and in Hobart. That’s going to make a big difference in terms of the maintenance supply chains and the economic viability of this vital industrial community.

I really want to thank everybody – the firm, the local workers and the unions, the state governments in South Australia led by Peter Malinauskas, in Tasmania, everybody has contributed to getting what’s is great outcome for Port Pirie, for Hobart, for Tasmania, for South Australia and for Australia.

I’d like to hand it over to Peter Malinauskas now, and we’ll come back to questions at the end. Thanks.

PETER MALINAUSKAS: Well, good morning, everybody, and thanks so much for joining us here at Nyrstar’s operations in Port Pirie. It’s a really important day. We’ve been working on this now for some months, and there are a number of people I want to acknowledge, none more so than the federal government. I’m glad Tim Ayres is here today, because Tim and his team have been working in lockstep with the South Australian government and Nyrstar to realise the announcement that we make.

Can I acknowledge Richard Holtum, the CEO of the Global Operations. I want to thank Richard for taking time out of his busy schedule to be here. He and his team, mainly represent by Jiri and Matt, have been fantastic to work with, and we’re very grateful for their support.

I want to thank Tom as well. The whole department has been working overtime, and particularly Paul Martyn what I can see, have been working around the clock on finalising some of the technical detail. And I want to thank Geoff Brock, local MP here. Brocky worked at the smelters, of course, and has a longstanding relationship not just with this facility but the community more broadly.

So this is – as Tim mentioned, this is antimony. It’s a critical mineral that represents the future of smelting capability in this country. It’s just one example of the critical minerals that as a country we have no choice but to produce. Few Australians would have heard of antimony, but it’s a critical mineral that has a number of applications, none more important than in the defence supply chain. In fact, antimony is often attributed for shortening World War II by 12 months. It is something that men and women in the field of battle simply must have. And other parts of the world, other countries – one in particular – is seeking to consolidate the production of critical minerals just like this, to the exclusion of all others, and that represents an unacceptable risk for sovereign countries with a common set of values, particularly around Western Liberal democracy.

To be able to produce antimony, you’ve got to be able to have a lead smelter. And they are in short supply in the Western world. And we are lucky here in South Australia – we have got one of the few, a highly productive lead and zinc smelter that has been upgraded over the years gone by and that now has the opportunity to go further up the value chain to produce critical metals just like this one.

Now, if we choose to invest and to do the work to participate in the critical metals supply chain, this town, this facility has a potentially very bright and prosperous future indeed. But we know it’s going to be a journey to get there, which is why partnership is mission critical. We cannot go down the path of pursuing the participation in the critical metals supply chain without active engagement from government at both a state and federal level, along with working with a highly sophisticated capital partner in Nyrstar and their parent company Trafigura. At the highest levels of global capital in Trafigura, right down to the federal government and in state and territory governments, we can work together to be able to make these critical metals of the future.

To that end I’ve got nothing but gratitude for our partnership with Trafigura and the federal government but also the Tasmanian government. This $55 million contribution from the South Australian government as part of a $135 million package is all about setting Port Pirie up for a more prosperous future. We know there is a journey in front of us to be able to tackle the challenges we see, particularly coming out of China, but we should be upfront and honest about them.

When people contemplate, is this an appropriate investment on behalf of taxpayers, one also has to think about the counterfactual. The counterfactual would be to allow the Western world to see China consolidate all of its smelting capacity – all of the world’s smelting capacity, which would mean that we don’t get to participate in the critical mineral and critical mineral supply chain of the future. That’s an unacceptable risk, particularly in the current geostrategic environment.

The history of this smelter is prescient. A few of you there last night would have heard me talk about this. But the Port Pirie smelter found its big industrial expansion first happening during World War I, when it had to produce lead and zinc in very significant quantities to be able to supply the British and Allied Forces during that time of war.

We know that if you don’t have a diverse supply of critical metals and minerals in geostrategic and vulnerable times, that creates an unacceptable risk. So it’s absolutely critical that Port Pirie as one of the few places in the world that can produce critical minerals and metals like this, it does so. That’s where we see not just an opportunity for geostrategic security but also an opportunity for new wealth creation in the Upper Spencer Gulf, which this government is wholeheartedly committed to, in conjunction with the federal government.

So, I thank all of those who have contributed to this effort. I look forward to answering any questions. And I’ll now take the opportunity to hand over to Richard, and again thank him for making time out of his very hectic global schedule to be here today.

RICHARD HOLTUM: Premier, Minister, thank you. Thank you very much for those kind words, but, most importantly, thank you to the South Australians, the federal and the Tasmanian governments for their foresight in supporting Nyrstar through this investment today.

Nyrstar has been here for – Port Pirie has been here for 135 years, Hobart for over a hundred years. And through this investment we are making sure that these facilities are going to be here for the foreseeable future. What these two industrial sites produce is, as has been said, absolutely critical to both the national security and to the renewable industry and to the infrastructure buildout, for Australia and the Western world. The fact that this site can produce 40 per cent of all the antimony required by the United States for critical tasks such as the hardening of bullets demonstrates the vitalness of these sites, the vitalness of these workers and the absolute importance of Pirie and Hobart to Australian governments and to more broadly the Western governments.

I very much look forward to the future of these sites. This is, as has been said, an interim funding whilst we do a two-year feasibility study and then hopefully after that a three-year rebuild. So this is very much step one on a process where Trafigura, Nyrstar and the Australian governments are going to be working in partnership and in lockstep to make sure that these industrial sites can continue to produce the absolutely critical minerals and metals that, as has been said, helped win World War I and helped to add to the national security of both Australia and the West.

So to summarise, it is extremely impressive, the foresight that the Australian governments have shown. And I very much look forward to continuing to work in partnership with them. And on that, I’ll hand over to Matt, the CEO of Nyrstar Australia, to say a few more words. Thank you very much.

MATT HOWELL: Good morning, and I acknowledge Minister Ayres and Premier Malinauskas. What a great day for Port Pirie as we embark on a new journey. I want to particularly thank the Australian government, the government of South Australia and the government of Tasmania for their vision and their courage in supporting these strategically important businesses.

We are now embarking on a pivot to critical metals, and here’s the thing – if Australia wants to be a nation that makes things, we have to invest in domestic manufacturing, not just digging things up and shipping them overseas for other nations to add value to. We can do it right here in the Upper Spencer Gulf in Port Pirie. Smelting is where the strategic advantage lies. That’s how to add value, and Port Pirie and Hobart have been doing it for a combined 200 years between them, employing thousands of Australians and advancing the nation generally.

If we think about antimony for defence, for batteries, for flame retardants, or germanium – it’s in your cameras for semiconductors – or bismuth or tellurium for solar panels, these are the metals that power our clean energy future and protect our nation. The package that’s been announced today enables us to invest in asset integrity, feasibility studies and fast-tracking antimony metal production. And you’ve seen it from the Premier today – we are actually making it, the only business in Australia doing it right now. So we have the capability. Smelting is in our DNA. This is a business that we know and understand well.

So in closing, I really do want to thank, again, the Australian government, the South Australian government and the Tasmanian governments for their vision and their courage in backing these strategically important industries. I want to thank the thousands of employees that have been through the smelter gates and stuck with us through good times and bad, and the hundreds of small businesses that we depend on and, in turn, depend on us. They are not just disparate collections of people and businesses; this is an industrial ecosystem. We depend on each other.

So we look forward now to getting on with the job and doing the hard work and being here for many years to come. With that, I’ll introduce Chris Wood from the Hazell Bros. Thank you.

CHRIS WOOD: Good morning. Hazell Bros is one of many contractors on site that plays an integral role in the operations onsite. We employ 73 full-time, 38 contractors onsite to undergo the raw materials handling contract onsite. But, more importantly, the process that’s here today is about the Port Pirie people, particularly the local government has put into that. As a fourth generation Port Pirian, my thanks goes to the local government, the Premier, Nyrstar and Trafigura for putting trust into us and this community and to continue to grow and prosper in the future. Thank you.

ENDS